


Follow My Voice

by oliviacirce



Category: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Genre: Multi, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2004, recipient:Nifra Idril
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-25
Updated: 2004-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:45:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliviacirce/pseuds/oliviacirce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yitzhak needs music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow My Voice

**Author's Note:**

> Old, old yuletide story. I think this was my first one! It, um, shows.

_my life goes on in endless song_

There is always music. Baby music, gurgling like water on stones, echoing the rhythmic drip drip drip of the faucet. Building music, creaking stairs and windowpanes, doors slamming shut and open out of time. Word music, rising on high, short shouts and falling on the deeper murmurings of inarticulate voices.

You memorize patterns until they are written across your mind, teaching yourself notes and time keys from undistilled noise. No one else hears, but you hum along anyway. With enough repetition, the fragments take shape: changing, emerging, shifting with meaning until they become something whole.

Someday, you will sing them.

\------

 _no storm can shake my inmost calm_

When you perform, everything is right.

Your music fills the dirty little cabarets, and you can feel it in your skin, in you hair, in the cheering of the audience.

Being on stage eliminates the confusion of day-to-day interaction, gives you a costume, a wig, and an identity. It's a malleable identity, like music, changeable with mood and genre.

You're more than a man, not quite a woman. Crystal. Yitzhak.

This is how it should be. This is what the songs mean, the combinations of high and low, dissonance and harmony. Why be one thing when you can be both?

\------

 _in prison cell and dungeon vile_

"Will you marry me?"

Misery pushes music away, turning performances into something bought and bartered and leaving you behind.

Hedwig's music reminds you of a long-lost language. You're her biggest fan.

"Please. Take me away from this living hell." It's bitter honesty. You have nothing else to give.

When she takes off your wig you wonder what she sees. Gender has lost significance under the guise of performance, and you've stopped looking for an absolute answer. You'd rather be a pattern of notes than a definition.

Her kiss lingers on your lips, almost a promise. You leave the wig behind.

\------

 _that hails a new creation_

"You're a man," Hedwig says, New York City looming on the skyline.

"What?" Confused, you turn to look at her.

Hedwig nods her perfect blonde head, once, definitively. "I say you are a man. So, you are a man. You can keep your hair long, change your clothes a little, grow a beard. Yes. A beard will suit you." She smiles.

"But I--"

"Yitzhak." You like the way your name sounds on her tongue, edgy like rock and roll, earthy like folk.

"Yitzhak," Hedwig says again, "Honey. I define you."

It must have been part of the wedding vows.

\------

 _while though the tempest loudly roars_

Tommy Gnosis is Hedwig's other creation, and even as you hate him for stealing the music and leaving her with nothing but desperate obsession, you also feel a kinship.

You are almost - almost - like siblings.

But Tommy, Tommy, everything is Tommy. You and the band follow Hedwig like so many shadows, stalking his tour across the country and never getting close enough to touch.

"It's all about New York," Phyllis says, only last week it was all about Pittsburgh.

This is music, too, the driving baseline of techno, hard and unchanging. You love Hedwig, but you are losing the melody.

\------

 _when tyrants tremble in their fear_

Rent is new music, different music, and it gives you an option out.

You can keep performing without Hedwig. You can be done with her categorization, done with her obsession, done with her songs.

"Fuck you," isn't enough, but "We're both so tired" is the truth. Like before, the grand gesture doesn't work. This time, the truth doesn't either.

You understand that Hedwig hates to let go. It hurts anyway, though, and when Phyllis ushers you out of the room, you are crying.

"I need to leave," you say, and walk away from the band. They know you'll be back.

\------

 _and though the darkness 'round me close_

New York is unforgiving at night, bleak and foreign. You can take care of yourself, but this city is not the dream you remember.

Past subway stations, disgorging symphonies of people. Past Broadway playhouses, emitting strains of musicals you almost recognize. Past musicians on sidewalks, still playing even though it's after ten p.m. Past the Virgin Records in Time Square, and suddenly Tommy Gnosis's enormous face gives you direction.

You stop back at the hotel to beg the necessary information from Phyllis, then head into the night again. It's late, but this is the sort of thing that requires darkness.

\------

 _while to that rock i'm clinging_

Tommy's hotel room is lavishly furnished and scattered with luggage. A guitar case stands in one corner, but you've never seen him play. The television is on mute, broadcasting his latest concert.

You're a little shocked that he agreed to see you. Maybe he feels the kinship. Maybe it was your introduction as "Hedwig's husband."

He is sitting on the edge of the bed, still in party clothes. The make-up is off, though, and you can see the boy that Hedwig must have fallen for.

"My name is Yitzhak," you say, "I want to know what Hedwig did to you."

\------

 _our thoughts to them are winging_

"Isn't it what I did to Hedwig?" Tommy asks dryly.

"No."

Tommy shrugs. "She pretended to be something she wasn't."

"A woman." You think you know this story.

"Yes. She - _he_. He lied to me."

"You loved her?"

He nods, hesitantly.

"Then why couldn't you accept what she was?" Hedwig has given you an answer, but you want to hear Tommy's.

Tommy is silent. You can wait.

"I couldn't accept her complexity." You recognize the honesty of recent discovery, and it surprises you. "Hedwig is more than man or woman. Different. You know that."

You do. It's Hedwig that doesn't.

\------

 _songs in the night it giveth_

Tommy knows things. It's his name, the name Hedwig gave him. Gnosis.

Tommy understands that a person can be more than one thing, that a person can be malleable and different and impossible to classify. Like Hedwig. Like you.

Tommy's knowledge is music: the music he took from Hedwig, the music Hedwig has been chasing. The music you lost, and found, and lost again.

"If you're not here to plead Hedwig's case," Tommy demands, "What do you want?" He doesn't sound tired.

"Knowledge," you say, and lean over to kiss him. When he kisses you back, you taste Hedwig's songs.

\------

 _how can i keep from singing?_

You don't know what Tommy said to Hedwig about you, if he said anything. You don't know why she let you be more, why she let you put on the wig. Maybe she recognized the taste of knowledge.

"Breathe feel love/ Give free/ Know in your soul/ Like your blood knows the way/ From your heart to your brain/ Knows that you're whole./ And you're shining/ Like the brightest star..."

You don't know, but the music is back. There are new songs, new words, new patterns. You can both be women now, and men. You can sing, and be whole.


End file.
